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The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks

theguardian.com

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Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks

#361

Post by ashtonkem »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #227
rattray wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OnlyFans claimed it was the banks, not the payment processors, who were the problem. Specifically, BNY Mellon, acting in an intermediary role between OnlyFans' banks and creators' banks, allegedly blocked all payouts to creators.

I believe it. For a smaller company, it will take one analyst stumbling over something problematic that may trigger an investigation ( think SAR ). If the issue is bad enough and customer does not have clout to back it, bank might derisk. The problem is.. it is not exactly standardized as each bank does their own thing thanks to BSA rules.

And it’s not exactly out of the realm of possibility that some analyst somewhere just really dislikes pornography. It’s not like there isn’t a robust anti-porn movement purposefully using “think of the children” as cover.

Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks

#363

Post by giancarlostoro »

iratewizard wrote: post #135
giancarlostoro wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont think they were talking about January 6 posts. I have seen all manner of Facebook friends censored for speaking their thoughts on varying subject matters that have been politicized over time. Also seen friends banned off Twitter for literal shitposting. I miss the internet when it was mostly full of nerds. After smartphones it all went downhill.

Summer never ended after 2008, sadly.

Not sure why you're getting downvoted, but after smartphones it became clear the landscape of the internet changed drastically. Fore example today you can get a smartphone for under a hundred dollars. It might not perform the best, but it will get you on the internet. Hell, nowadays you can get hundred dollar laptops. Up till the late 2000's most people had to own a laptop or a desktop computer to get online, most phones charged up the nose for internet access if I remember correctly.

Weirdly enough, had smartphones not became a thing, I think Facebook Games would of possibly become the next Steam. It's a shame Facebook couldnt get their Games to take off as big as it once did, they would of produced an entirely different company.

Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks

#364

Post by iratewizard »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #363
iratewizard wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Summer never ended after 2008, sadly.

Not sure why you're getting downvoted, but after smartphones it became clear the landscape of the internet changed drastically. Fore example today you can get a smartphone for under a hundred dollars. It might not perform the best, but it will get you on the internet. Hell, nowadays you can get hundred dollar laptops. Up till the late 2000's most people had to own a laptop or a desktop computer to get online, most ph…

A bot downvotes the first post I make in every thread and has ever since I criticized the moderator Dang.

Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks

#365

Post by TimJRobinson »

ryeguy_24 wrote: post #13

I was thinking of this just the other day. Just the past few weeks, Apple with CSAM, OnlyFans getting between people and their fans/clients. All of these big corporate moves are making me think more and more of decentralization of platforms. Is that coming?

Decentralized Finance has exploded in growth over the last 6 months (see https://defillama.com/ for stats). Metamask is quite easy to use and I can see it becoming a payment option on many sites soon.

Decentralized Social Media is less promising unfortunately, it's a harder problem to scale because nobody wants to pay for it and without payment its hard to ensure it's not overrun with trolls / spam. Twitter's Bluesky project is probably the best effort to fix this atm.

Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks

#366

Post by OrvalWintermute »

GiorgioG wrote: post #153
OrvalWintermute wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I am concerned about the coercive power of these platforms against speech they find unpopular, whether porn, or something else.... > A girl pleasuring herself isn’t the same thing as encouraging people to storm the White House and overthrow democracy Enough with the hyperbole, the FBI has already stated they found little evidence of a grand conspiracy to overthrow the govt [1], despite the fact we know that the…

Care to peddle your bullshit somewhere else? There may have been no 'organized' conspiracy to overthrow the gov't, but they sure as hell were trying to illegally pressure politicians into not certifying the election.

Maybe you should reread the rules before you comment more?

Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks

#367

Post by Smashure »

luckylion wrote: post #195
Smashure wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see someone already put a link up, but extremism is extremism and the Christian extremism in the U.S. parallels Islamic extremism quite a bit. Including openly murdering those you disagree with.

This feels like "yeah, gang crime is kind of like the Holocaust -- people die". There's really no similarity, and pretending otherwise is just trivializing the Taliban.

I would say it’s a numbers game. Islamic extremism has way more members.

Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks

#368

Post by Smashure »

mhb wrote: post #144
Smashure wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Checks are slow and can be faked or scammed. Sending cash also wouldn’t work. MasterCard and Visa had a strong monopoly on instant transactions at a distance. They fought PayPal quite a bit in the beginning as it encroached on their monopoly. Thankfully crypto has solved this monopoly

Yes. There's a cost to checks just like there's a cost to using credit cards. The slowness of checks can be mitigated by offering some sort of access until the check clears. I'm sure there are plenty of creative types who can figure out how to route around the credit card problem. Also checks, credit cards and crypto aren't the only payment options.

Instant verified electronic money transmission is difficult. There are not many options here. MC, Visa, PayPal, Crypto… gift cards?

Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks

#369

Post by unity1001 »

ckdarby wrote: post #320
unity1001 wrote: post #291

Indeed - Payment companies like Visa and Mastercard enforcing American cultural and religious conservatism on other countries and nations is an illegal situation - per other countries' laws. These are effectively monopolies. It doesnt matter whether there's two of them. If they collectively enforce something onto the people of other countries - like Europe - then they are violating those countries' laws They must be…

One of the reasons why this happens is money and specifically money from pension funds. The largest pension funds nearly all have "morality clauses" with them and won't invest with an entity that goes against that. The other portion of this is the hassle of dealing with the adult industry in terms of politics. You can Google to see how the news articles came out claiming PornHub was being used for pornographic materi…

Still doesnt change the fact that these corporations force American norms on European consumers. They have no right to do so.

Re: The real OnlyFans scandal is the unaccountable power of platforms and banks

#370

Post by stickfigure »

yashap wrote: post #273
stickfigure wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect that you are off by several orders of magnitude.

Digging a bit more, I don’t think so. The company that owns PornHub does about half a billion dollars per year in revenue: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MindGeek That includes revenue from other brands too, but I believe PornHub is their top brand, and likely accounts for a good portion of that. Also, how much money flows through PornHub that doesn’t count as revenue? I don’t know much about their business model, b…

My knowledge is a little old (I was the CTO of a major porn site in the mid-2000s) but I would be willing to bet that most of Pornhub's income comes from affiliate fees, advertising, and other B2B transactions. These are not card transactions and do not go through payment processors.
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